Today I'm going back 33 years to 1989 and Tottenham's Football League visit to Plough Lane to play Wimbledon in Division 1. The game was attended by 12,366 but I would wager that football fans of a certain age will remember exactly where they were when they heard news of the events taking place further North in Sheffield that day. The date, 15th April 1989, will go down in infamy as the date on which 96 innocent people died while attending a football match.
I distinctly remember the rumour that began to spread along the away terrace that day. There was some kind of incident happening at the FA Cup Semi-Final at Hillsborough. Back in 1989 we were regularly exposed to hooliganism and I think that most of us assumed that Liverpool fans were on the rampage once again. It was Liverpool supporters who were guilty of causing the problems at the European Cup Final in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels in 1985 which led to the deaths of 39 Juventus fans and I think we assumed that something similar was happening in Sheffield. Some Spurs fans broke into a song about the "Same old Scousers" in the absence of a proper update about what was actually happening at Hillsborough. These were the days before Smartphones and so we were reliant on our updates coming from the odd transistor radio or mobile phone call. When we returned to the car following our match, the full scale of the horror that had occurred at Hillsborough that day unfolded leaving us dumbfounded and rendering the game that we had just watched utterly unimportant.
With the hindsight that a 33 year elapse of time can bring, a few things spring to mind. I had been brought up to respect and trust the police. This was probably the first time that I can recall being aware that the police couldn't necessarily be trusted. The scale of the cover-up that senior officers of the South Yorkshire Police instigated in the aftermath of Hillsborough was astonishing. How they thought that they could get away with it surely relied on the forces of justice and law closing ranks behind them. Thank God that justice prevailed in the end although it took three decades for that to be the case. This was also probably the first time that I understood that the printed media couldn't be trusted either. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, The Sun newspaper (or rag as I prefer to call it) ran a story about drunken Liverpool fans pissing on bodies as they lay on the floor. It was a disgraceful fiction and slur and, 33 years later, I continue to urge you to "Don't buy the Sun". No apology or charitable donation will ever excuse "reporting" like that. Finally, did you know that the oft quoted 96 unnecessary deaths was actually 97? Last year, Hillsborough claimed its final victim when Andrew Devine passed away after suffering severe and irreversible brain damage on that fateful day. Rest in Peace fellow football fans, we will not forget what happened.
Spurs won the featured match by 2-1 with their goals scored by Paul Stewart and Chrissie Waddle versus Eric Young's lone reply for the Dons. Bobby Gould's Wimbledon side that day looked more than useful and contained players such as Hans Segers, Terry Phelan, Vinnie Jones, former Tottenham players John Scales and Garry Brooke, TV presenter John Fashanu, Lawrie Sanchez and Dennis (the menace) Wise. It is not known whether Vinnie Jones managed to get his hands on Paul Gascoigne's tackle that day but I'd be pretty sure that Gazza wouldn't have forgotten the treatment that he received the previous season while playing for Newcastle. I've attached a photo of that incident to my blog if you don't remember it. It's a (crown) jewel!
At the season's end, Spurs found themselves in a comfortable sixth place in the table but the fans would not have been satisfied with that because the Champions that season came from just a couple of miles down the road. Arsenal's dramatic title decider took place at Anfield on 26th May and had been delayed due to the Hillsborough disaster. God knows what state of mind the Liverpool players were in that day but I doubt that winning football matches was quite as important to them as it once had been. Wimbledon finished in a comfortable position too, level on points with Manchester United in 12th place. Relegated that season were Middlesbrough, West Ham United and Newcastle United.
CRB Match No. 610
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